The present invention relates to a machine for joining together a filter tip and cigarettes with pasted coupling paper to form a cigarette having a filter tip.
To manufacture a filter-tipped cigarette according to the prior art, pasted coupling paper is wound around a unit comprising two cigarettes laid coaxially with each other and a filter tip material twice the length of a filter tip interposed between the two cigarettes to conjoin the cigarettes and the filter tip material into a single rod-like article. The single rod-like material is then cut in the middle into two filter-tipped cigarettes. Conventionally, during forming, the unit is kept in a shallow groove of a cylindrical drum so that the unit is conveyed into a rolling passage. The coupling paper is then wound around the unit as the unit is taken out of the groove and rotated rearward by a rolling mechanism.
Such a method of winding and device therefor is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Post-Examination Publication No. 50-19639. In the device, a rolling mechanism facing a cylindrical drum has a belt which is moved in the same direction of rotation as the cylindrical drum as a unit is pinched and rolled between the drum and the belt, to wind coupling paper around a filter tip material and cigarettes.
In the device employing the belt, the revolution speed of the cylindrical drum or the cigarette production speed can be increased without heightening the rolling speed of the unit. However, since the belt extends around at least one half of the circumference of the cylindrical drum, there is a problem that the belt comes into contact with the surface of the drum and is worn and the surface of the drum is damaged when the cigarette or the filter tip is not supplied.
In the British Patent Application Laid-Open to the Public No. 2078090A, in order to solve this problem, a device having a mechanism, which uses a magnetic or pneumatic force to attract the inside of a belt to support it, and another device, in which the wide belt is used and the belt is supported at both the side edges by discs, are proposed. However, with these devices, the construction is inevitably complicated to keep the belt concave. In addition, since a strong force acts to support the belt, the belt is likely to be damaged. For this reason, there is another problem that these devices are uneconomic in the maintenance of equipment.